"Sorry," I said. "But really, it was fine. People go to work there every day and nothing happens. Everyone seems to think it's safer on the wards than out on the streets."
"Sounds like rationalization to me. Meanwhile, that psychologist gets stuffed in a car trunk."
"There's no indication, so far, that her work had anything to do with it."
"Good. The main thing is, you're back. Have you eaten yet?"
"No. You?"
"Just juice in the morning."
"Busy day?"
"Pretty busy, trying to finish that mandolin." She stretched to her full height. She had on a red T-shirt and denim overalls, size six Skechers. Small gold hoops glinted from her ears. She took them off when she worked. Not planning to return to the studio.
"I'm hungry now," she said. "Hint, hint."
"Let's go out," I said.
"A mind reader!"
"Just call me the Answer Man."
We gave Spike a chewbone and drove to an Indian buffet in Santa Monica that was open all afternoon. Rice and lentils, kulcha bread stuffed with onions, curried spinach with soft cheese, spicy eggplant, hot milky tea. Some sort of chant played in the background-a single male voice keening, maybe praying. The two ectomorphs in the next booth got up and left and we were the only patrons. The waiter left us alone.
Halfway through the pile on her plate, Robin said, "I know I'm harping, but next time you go somewhere like that, please call the minute you get out."
"You were really that worried?"
"Ax murderers and vampires, Lord knows what else?"
I covered her hand with mine. "Rob, the men I saw today were submissive." Except for the bearded fellow on the yard who'd come toward me. The fight in the hall. Plastic windows, S&R rooms.
"What makes them submit?"
"Medication and a structured environment."
She didn't seem comforted. "So you learned nothing there?"
"Not so far. Later we went to Claire Argent's house." I described the place. "What do you think?"
"About what?"
"The way she lived."
She drank tea, put the cup aside, thought awhile. "Would I want to live like that?
Not forever, but maybe for a short stretch. Take a nice vacation from all the complications."
"Complications," I said.
She smiled. "Not you, honey. Just... circumstances. Obligations, deadlines-life piling up. Like when I was handling all the construction. Or now, when the orders stack up and everyone wants results yesterday. Sometimes life can start to feel like too much homework, and a little simplicity doesn't sound bad at all."
"This was more than simplicity, Robin. This was... bleak. Sad."
"You're saying she was depressed?"
"I don't know enough to diagnose her," I said. "But the feeling I got from the place was-inorganic. Blank."
"Did you see any evidence she was neglecting herself?" she said.
"No. And everyone describes her as pleasant, dependable. Distant, but no obvious pathology."
"So maybe inwardly she was fine, too."
"Maybe," I said. "The only things she did amass were books. Maybe intellectual stimulation was what turned her on."
"There you go. She trimmed things down to concentrate on what mattered to her."
I didn't answer.
"You don't think so," she said.
"Pretty severe trim," I said. "There was nothing personal in the entire house. Not a single family photo."
"Perhaps she wasn't close to her family. Or she had problems with them. But even so, how different does that make her from millions of other people, Alex? She sounds to me more like... someone cerebral. Living in her head. Enjoying her privacy. Even if she did have social problems, what does any of that have to do with her murder?"
"Maybe nothing." I spooned more rice onto my plate, played with grains of basmati, took a bite of bread. "If she wanted intellectual stimulation, why switch from a research job to Starkweather?"
"What kind of research was she doing?"
"Alcoholism and how it affects reaction time."
"Anything earth-shattering?"
"Not to me." I summarized the studies. "Actually, it was pretty mundane."
"Could be she came to a realization: she'd been a good little girl, doing what was expected of her since grad school. She got tired of hacking it out. Wanted to actually help someone."
"She didn't pick a very easy group to help."
"So it was the challenge that motivated her. That, and tackling something new."
"The men at Starkweather don't get cured."
"Then I don't know. All out of guesses."
"I'm not trying to be contentious," I said. "She just really puzzles me. And I think there's a good deal of truth in what you're saying. She got divorced within the last year or so. Maybe she was trying to cut free on several levels. Maybe for someone who'd been grinding out studies year after year, Starkweather seemed novel."
She smiled and stroked my face. "If knitted brows are any kind of measure, Milo's getting his money's worth out of you."
"The other thing I wonder about is the first case-Richard Dada, the would-be actor.
On the surface, he and Claire have little in common. But what they do seem to share is negative space-an absence of friends, enemies, quirks. Both of them were very neat. No entanglements. Maybe we're talking about loneliness and an attempt to fill the void. Some sort of lonely-hearts hookup with the wrong person."
"A man and a woman?" she said. "A bisexual killer?"
"That would make Dada gay, and Milo never found any indication of that. Or maybe it had nothing to do with sex-just companionship, some kind of common-interest club. On the other hand, the cases could be unrelated."
I raised her hand to my lips, kissed the fingertips one by one. "Mr. Romantic. I'd better switch gears before I drive you into isolation."
She grinned, waved languidly, kissed air, put on her Bette Davis voice. "Pass me the spinach, dahling. Then you can pay the check and sweep me off my feet to the nearest
Baskin
Robbins for some jamoca almond fudge. After that, hi-ho all the way home, where you ah cawjully invited to add some entanglement to my life."
8.
AT EIGHT P.M. Milo called. "Am I interrupting anything?"
He'd missed interrupting by an hour. Robin was reading in bed and I'd taken Spike for a short walk up the canyon. When the phone rang, I was sitting out on the terrace, trying to rid my mind of question marks, struggling to concentrate on the sound of the waterfall that fed the fishpond. Grateful because I couldn't hear the
freeway.
"Not at all. What's up?"
"Got the info on Claire and Stargill. Married two years, divorced nearly two, no kids. I reached Stargill. He says the split was amicable. He's a partner in a ten-lawyer firm, remarried three months ago. He just learned about Claire. San Diego papers didn't carry it, but one of his partners was up here, read about it."
"What was his demeanor?"
"He sounded pretty upset over the phone, but what the hell does that mean? Said he doubted there was anything he could add but he'd talk to me. I set up an appointment for tomorrow morning at ten."
"San Diego?"
"No, he's driving up."
"Very cooperative fellow."
"He has business here anyway. Some commercial property closings-he's a real estate lawyer."
"So he comes up to L.A. regularly."
"Yeah, I made note of that. Let's see what he's like face-to-face. We're meeting at
Claire's house. Which she owns. It was his bachelor place, but after the divorce he signed it over to her and agreed to pay the mortgage and taxes in lieu of alimony and her dipping into his stocks and bonds."
"Who inherits the property now?"
"Good question. Stargill wasn't aware of any will, and he claims neither of them took out insurance on the other. I never came across any policies; Claire was thirty-nine, probably wasn't figuring on dying. I suppose a lawyer would know how to play the probate process-he might make a case for mortgage payment constituting partial ownership. But my guess her parents would come first. What do you think a place like that is worth?"
"Three hundred or so. How much is equity?"
"We'll find that out tomorrow if Mr. Cooperative stays cooperative.... Maybe he got tired of paying her bills, huh?"
"It could chafe, especially now that he's remarried. Especially if he's got money problems. Be good to know what his finances are like."
"If you want to meet him, be there at ten. I left a message with Heidi Ott's machine, no callback yet. And the lab sent another report on the prints: definitely only Claire's. Looks like she really did go it alone."
The next morning I called Dr. Myron Theobold at County Hospital, left a voicemail message, and drove to Cape Horn Drive, arriving at 9:45. Milo's unmarked was already there, parked at the curb. A deep-gray late-model BMW sedan sat in front of the garage, ski clamps on the roof.
The house's front door was unlocked, and I entered. Milo had reassumed his position at the center of the empty living room. Near the kitchen counter stood a man in his forties wearing a blue suit, white shirt, yellow pin-dot tie. He was just shy of six feet, trim, with short, curly red hair and a matching beard streaked with gray.
Skinny gold watch on his left wrist, wedding band studded with small diamonds, shiny oxblood wingtips.
Milo said, "This is Dr. Delaware, our psychological consultant. Doctor, Mr.
Stargill."
"Joe Stargill." A hand extended. Dry palms but unsteady hazel eyes. His voice was slightly hoarse. He looked past me, into the empty room, and shook his head.
"Mr. Stargill was just saying the house looks pretty different."
Stargill said, "This wasn't the way we lived. We had wall-to-wall carpeting, furniture. Over there was a big leather sofa; that wall held a chrome cabinet-an etagere, I think it was called. Claire taught me that. I'd bought a few things when
I was single but Claire filled it in. Pottery, figurines, macrame, all that good stuff." He shook his head again. "She must have gone through some major changes."
"When's the last time you spoke to her, sir?" said Milo.
"When I U-Hauled my things away. Maybe a half-year before the final decree."
"So you were separated before the divorce."
Stargill nodded, touched the tip of his beard.
Milo said, "So your last contact would be around two and a half years ago."
"That's right."
"You never talked about the divorce?"
"Well, sure. A phone call here and there to wrap up details. I thought you meant a real conversation."
"Ah," said Milo. "And after the divorce you never came back to visit?"
"No reason to," said Stargill. "Claire and I were over- we'd been over long before we made it official. Never really started, actually."
"The marriage went bad quickly."
Stargill sighed and buttoned his jacket. His hands were broad, ruddy, coated with beer-colored hair. "It wasn't a matter of going bad. The whole thing was essentially a mistake. Here, I brought this. Found it this morning."
He fished out a crocodile wallet and removed a small photo, which Milo examined, then handed to me.
Color snapshot of Claire and Stargill arm in arm, "Just Married" banner in the background. He wore a tan suit and brown turtleneck shirt, no beard, eyeglasses. His nude face was bony, his smile tentative.
Claire had on a long, pale blue sleeveless dress printed with lavender pansies, and she carried a bouquet of white roses. Her hair was long, straight, parted in the middle, her face leaner than in the headshot I'd seen, the cheekbones more pronounced.
Full smile.
"Don't really know why I brought it," said Stargill. "Didn't know I even had it."
"Where'd you find it?" said Milo.
"In my office. I went in early this morning before driving up here, started going through all the paperwork Claire and I had in common: divorce documents, transfer of ownership for the house. It's all out in the car-take whatever you want. The picture popped out from between some pages."
Stargill turned to me. "Guess a psychologist could interpret that-still having it.
